Captaining a 'very large team'

Orrville native overseeing ER operations at Aultman

CANTON -- If you think playing sports doesn't provide valuable lessons for later in life, Stacie Howard-Carpenter would be more than happy to disagree.

Howard-Carpenter, whose name was synonymous with sports during her years at Orrville High School, is the director of the emergency room unit at Aultman Hospital in Canton. And she is adamant that being part of a medical team is, at the bottom line, little different from being part of a sports team.

Born and raised in Orrville, Howard-Carpenter attended Orrville High School where she was a standout athlete. Her towering height made her a natural for women's basketball, volleyball, track and softball, and she excelled at each.

But she said behind her were hard-working parents who were her role models, who shared a single-minded determination their daughter was going to attend college. And their daughter didn't let them down, also excelling academically at OHS and being inducted into the National Honor Society.

After graduating from OHS in 1990, Howard-Carpenter began attending Ohio State University. She said she had long been torn between a teaching career and that of a nurse, but in her second year of college the nursing instinct won out, and she thought she was headed toward a speciality in pediatrics.

Following her graduation from OSU, Howard-Carpenter spent six months looking for a job in the nursing field, but found opportunities to be few and far between. Eventually she was hired by Riverside Hospital in Columbus as a registered nurse in a step-down unit.

"I took what was available at the time and went from there," she remembers.

But more and more, Howard-Carpenter said, she found her interests leaning toward ER work because it was there she felt she could really help people who needed it most.

"I found that ER nursing is my passion, because you never know what's going to come through that door. It's always a rush, using my skills to figure out what's wrong with the patient and how he or she can best be helped. I love patient care."

The summer of 2001 saw two major events in Howard-Carpenter's life. She was hired to work in the emergency department of Aultman Hospital in Canton, and about the same time she gave birth to the first of her two children, both daughters.

Within two months of having the baby, she decided the family would move to Orrville.

"I wanted my kids to go to Orrville City Schools, just as I had done, and grow up in Orrville, which I always believed was a very special place," said Howard-Carpenter.

In 2005 Howard-Carpenter began a split role, dividing her time between the emergency rooms at Dunlap Hospital in Orrville and Aultman in Canton. Even today Howard-Carpenter said she continues to work "casual" shifts at what is now Aultman Orrville Hospital's emergency room, typically two four-hour shifts each month.

"It's good to work in the (Orrville) community," she said, adding she often sees the same faces in both the Canton and Orrville hospitals.

"I think that for a lot of people seeing a familiar face is comforting at a traumatic time," she noted.

Then eight months ago, coincidentally at the time when Dunlap and Aultman were inking a merger agreement, Howard-Carpenter was named director of the emergency room operations at Aultman Hospital in Canton, being put in charge of a staff of 140 employees and having six assistant nurse managers. Suddenly she was in charge of supervising, budgeting, staffing, networking, scheduling and much more.

She said it was strange because now she was in the position of managing many of the nurses who had come into Aultman with her a decade earlier.

"But what was good," she said, "was this gave the department a lot of stability. The good core people I started out with are still here with me. It's kind of like a family, because you see these people more than you see your own family."

And that's where the teamwork comes in.

Howard-Carpenter said everything she learned in playing team sports at Orrville High School came into play in effectively managing the ER unit.

"ER nursing is always team nursing," she said. "It's very much like being part of an athletic team, with every member doing his or her job to win. There are a lot of similarities. It's the same concept in a different light. I'm the captain of a very large team here."

Howard-Carpenter noted two members of that team are also from Orrville. One of them is Kristen Beichler, her assistant nurse manager, and the other is staff nurse Joanna Yutzy.

Noting she earned her master's degree in health administration in 2000 and is only four weeks away from graduating with a master of science degree in nursing, Howard-Carpenter confesses she is "always looking for the next challenge."

She predicts her present job is "not the end for me." She said she would "like to grow as a director; learn, grow and improve. I want to build my skill set and find ways to more effectively utilize the knowledge I've acquired over the years. I think there's always the opportunity to grow as a leader and manager."

An enthusiastic cheerleader for the health care field, Howard-Carpenter said there is world of opportunity there, and she strongly encourages high school students to consider it as a vocation.

"There are opportunities at career schools for students to do job-shadowing and get LPN licenses. We have high school programs (at Aultman) that allow students to observe various areas in the health care field. We have Orrville residents in our College of Nursing program. The ability to advance in the field is great."

Reporter Paul Locher can be reached at 330-682-2055 or plocher@the-daily-record.com.